It was the year2008 and I passed out of university without a job in hand. After a lot of struggle for a few months, I managed to grab one in a garment factory. It was a shift job of 8 hours and after the shift, I had a fantastic 8 hrs of his personal time with my friends. It was not needed to balance anything and my life was good with default Balanced work life.

As I moved further in my career and exposed to other sides of the business, I no more wanted to work in a factory but in a good multinational company. I had a picture in my mind and somehow obsessed with being formally dressed and Laptop hanging on the shoulder and smartphone in my hand . After lot of hard work, I managed to get into a good Multinational company with all facilities I had in my mind. I was young and passionate so started working hard without realizing that I no more had any personal life, took whatever responsibility I could until one day when I was introduced with something called Work-life balance and this helped me to separate the two major field of your life called Work life and Personal life. I esteemed this concept and followed it throughout. Many people appreciated the way I managed my time and I thought this is the best way to follow.

Then comes the year 2020, The COVID 19 year which changed everyone’s life in a way which was never expected, and the complete world was locked down. Many things changed but one thing which was almost common to all was Working from home(WFH) but this was not the same as this time you have to contribute in every household stuff and there is no rule for anything. I wanted to continue with the same pattern and tried to balance both the fields but it did not go for long and somehow I was not productive and very much frustrated. It was not a easy time for sure and nothing was getting done as per a plan so I took a step back and thought about it. One day my mind got struck with something called Work-life Integration.

This Integration was different than my earlier phase so it needed some attention to make it meaningful. Work Life Integration worked well when many people worked from home and it is something we need to learn even when in 2022 office has started opening. Even the Organization need to make sure employee feel home when they are at work. Work Life Integration does not mean having compromising on personal life or loosing the effectiveness at work due to personal priorities. We normally allot 8-10 hrs daily for work , 8 hrs sleep and rest for so called personal life. In nutshell apart from sleep we have 16 hrs for Work and personal life. Now assume these 16 hours as one single life and then planning each day separately as per need in these 16 hrs where someday personal priorities dominates and other days are dominated by professional priorities. This is just a perspective which came to me during these days as anyways we are managing this way but if we accept it like this , life becomes easy and it lowers the stress and pressure. Below are few things which can be followed to integrate the work life successfully.

• Accept the change – It is important to embrace uncertainty and accept the change before we do anything else. Everything around has become uncertain as it never was. In the last 3 years entire world has changed and will change in future as well.
• Apply first thing first by Steven Covey from the book 7 habits of highly effective people to prioritize your work (both personal and professional). It would be help to priorities Urgent and important work before anything else
• Blur the line between work life and personal life to Integrate the total time together and break the day(16hrs) in smaller Pomodoro (breaking the Task in to small time intervals) depending on the priorities of the day. Remember priorities can be both personal or professional and may vary every day.
• Follow a Principle Fool “with the rules” from a book Adapt-Ability by Max Mckeown which says start by knowing about any rules and understanding what the rules are, why they exist, and what wisdom and experience they contain. it helps to get equipped and break them or change them as you need.
• Last but not least Get soft & easy with yourself and Empathize with others as everyone will have their own rules and challenges so don’t judge with your bias.

Overall when I look back I think we should keep disrupting ourselves in all areas of life and challenge all the rules which may be fooling us so go ahead with Integration in your life and create a better life with more harmony.